


don't complicate it

by defcontwo



Category: X-Factor (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Canon Queer Character of Color, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, a series of short vignettes more than anything else
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-01-01 23:43:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Julio Richter, a character study in several parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaptainClintSpiderBalder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainClintSpiderBalder/gifts).



> A series (hopefully) based off a discussion about how tragically little Julio Richter fic there is.

"Is this the part where you, uh, take my hand and look in my eyes gently and tell me how this is gonna go because uh, oh shit," Madrox says, tripping backwards on his way out of his jeans and falling onto the bed with a bounce. "I haven’t done this before." 

God, they are — they are unforgivably drunk. Terry is probably, quite rightly, going to tear them into a million different pieces for leaving scattered beer cans all over the kitchen. 

The whole world is going a little — a little something, fuzzy around the edges and tilting sideways, so Julio tips froward, falls with it, stumbles sideways onto the bed next to Madrox. This is such a bad idea. 

In his sort of, his list of shitty, stupid things he’s done in his life, this is probably gonna rank up there pretty high but he’s here and Madrox is here and ‘Star is somewhere, not here — on the other side of the world finding himself when all Julio wants to do is scream that he’s right here, I’m right here, why can’t you find yourself with me by your side. 

Fuck, this is some sad shit. 

"You a virgin, Madrox?" 

"You know what I meant, you, uh you — never mind, can’t think of a reference good enough. Ric. Riiiiiiic," Madrox says, placing a hand on Julio’s shoulder, "Ric, be gentle with me." 

“ _Joder_ — shut up, Madrox,” Julio says, hauling the other man in for a kiss and there are betters ways to get Madrox to finally shut the fuck up, probably, but he’s in the here and now and this is the best he’s got. 

Madrox tastes like beer and the leftover Chinese food they had for dinner and it’s about as sexy as the church mass he used to have to sit through on long Sundays as a kid but. 

Yeah, well. Fuck it.


	2. a shipwreck between your ribs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's having bad taste in men and then there's fucking a Maximoff. One's just regrettable, the other's a goddamn disaster in the making.

"Sleeping together" implies more than once, implies a habit and it was just the once, so -- so it's not like he was lying, not really. 

\--- 

There's having bad taste in men and then there's fucking a Maximoff. One's just regrettable, the other's a goddamn disaster in the making. 

\--- 

He hated them, sometimes. The X-Men. Summers and Howlett, standing there on the pedestals of their own making, talking like they understand what it is to feel different. Talking like their problems are everyone's problems. 

Sure, maybe. They're mutants, that's one layer. 

But they got no idea what it's like to be different like Julio is different -- so many layers of _other_ that sometimes, when he was young and uncertain, shaking apart in his own skin, he felt like he'd choke on it. 

The first time he woke in the middle of the night, sweating and sticky, dreams of scratchy stubble and angled planes not fading fast enough, he'd made a beeline for the bathroom, retching awfully, hands digging into the cold, tiled bathroom floor hard enough to leave a mark. 

He'd lain awake the rest of the night, staring at the ceiling unseeing and wondering how he wound up such a fucked up joke of a human being. 

There was a time when he would have given anything, _anything_ , to be less. To be more like everyone else. 

You know what they say. 

Be careful what you wish for. 

\--- 

Kissing Pietro is -- something else, that's for sure. There's no tenderness here, no love -- this is not 'Star, soft and shy and so uncertain, awkward in their teenaged fumblings. 

This is attraction, plain and simple, Pietro moving over him, purposeful and intent. There's a wild edge in the other man's eyes, like the eye of the oncoming storm, like the last act of a dying man. There is something desperate in their movements, in the jerky way Pietro tugs at Julio's belt, pulling at the buckle like it'll disappear if he just glares at it hard enough. 

"Mierda -- will you just, hold on, I got it," Julio says, and Pietro huffs, something disappointed tinging around the edges and it takes a Julio a second for it to click into place. The aborted movements, the impatience -- the other man is used to doing this at a different pace and it's like re-learning to walk, to breathe, every little thing shaking apart because they are not who they were. 

And Julio should leave it alone, he should, he should just follow his first instincts -- to push down the pants of that ridiculous Quicksilver suit and put his mouth to better use but there's something inside of him, something contrary and ugly that wants to pick and prod, make Pietro hurt like he hurts. 

"Bet you've gotten better at this lately," Julio tosses out. "I mean, no one really likes it when sex ends _too_ soon, yeah?" 

Pietro shoves him into the wall with a snarl, pushes his mouth against Julio's in a mockery of a kiss that's more teeth and blood than anything else, more to do with getting Julio to shut the fuck up than foreplay. 

"Do you always have such terrible bedside manner, Rictor, or am I just special?" 

"You're just special," Julio quips, before falling to his first instincts, to his knees, scoffing at the X-Men affectations, the uniform that stands for nothing before he pushes it out of the way, scraping his teeth on the underside of Pietro's dick, laughing up at the other man when he makes a pissy huffing sound. There was a time when Julio was ashamed of this, of how much he _loved_ doing this but times change, you gotta roll with the punches, and right now priority number one is seeing what kind of noises he can wring out of Pietro's annoying, smirking mouth. 

Priority number two -- well, he hasn't gotten to that yet. 

\--- 

Some days, when life just got to be a little too much or he just needed a break, he'd fuck off for an afternoon or a whole day and go to ground. Find the nearest park or mountain or anything that's not concrete and pavement and just flop to the ground, dig his hands deep into the dirt, feel it scrape underneath his fingernails and _listen_. 

There was a whole network, a living and breathing and shifting thing beneath his feet, beneath his skin, and only he knew about it -- only he knew the way the very Earth would sing on a warm, calm day -- the way it would holler and groan during an earthquake, like a mother goddess letting out her battle cry. 

After, he sat in a corner of Central Park and dug his hands into the grass, into the finely potted dirt and he waited and waited but the sounds never came to him. He pulled up roots and he dug himself in and he cried, messily and loudly, without a care in the whole goddamn world who might see and he thought -- maybe I just have to get closer. 

\--- 

"Have you thought about my proposition, Rictor?" 

Julio shrugs on his leather jacket, sits on the edge of the bed and sighs. Touches a tentative hand to the split lip, feels the way his muscles ache in all the right places. This was a mistake, maybe, or a benediction. Maybe he's long past the point of being able to tell the difference. 

"I'll think about it." 

\---

C'mon, Rictor, make the earth move.


	3. jamie madrox, fashion police

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Didn’t you wear that shirt for the past two days in a row?"

Julio stifles a yawn, exhaustion creeping in on the edges of his consciousness. It’s way too early for any of them to be up but Jamie has it in his head that there’s a lead they need to follow for their latest case and it involves being up at the ass crack of dawn, chasing down what might possibly be mutant alien newspaper boys. 

Dios, how the fuck is this his life. 

"Didn’t you wear that shirt for the past two days in a row?" Jamie asks, looking way too chipper in a way that sort of suggests that he didn’t get any sleep at all in the first place and he’s maybe a little too pleased about it. Probably thinks that pulling an all nighter is more noir, the great big fucking weirdo. 

Julio looks down and shrugs. The t-shirt is worn and faded but it doesn’t, upon closer inspection and a cursory sniff, smell all that bad. He’s pretty sure he got this shirt off the floor of a one night stand’s apartment a couple of years ago, actually, but no one needs to know that. “So?” 

"Aren’t you supposed to be, I don’t know, better about that kind of thing?"

Julio sets the thermos he was filling down with a thud, spilling coffee over the sides. He does not get paid enough for this bullshit.

"Madrox, if you ever say shit like that to me again, especially before I’ve had my coffee, it’s goin’ all over you."


	4. we all come from the earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With his powers back, Julio returns to an old tradition.

Julio hasn’t done this in a while, now. Hasn’t done this since the first day he knew it was over, since the day he woke up and his entire world was ripped apart, everything that he knew about himself uprooted. 

But — things have changed, again. His world’s been set to rights, in more ways than one. Tectonics a steady thrum in his veins and a familiar redhead at his back and it is like he wakes up every day, and finally, it’s all starting to make a little more sense. 

He sets out early, breaks his bike out of storage and just goes. Doesn’t tell anyone, doesn’t pack anything, doesn’t plan anything — he never has, before, and he doesn’t plan to start now. 

Julio gets as far out of the city as he can before pulling over, parking his bike and flopping to the ground, fingers digging into the ground, dirt coating his fingernails and just stops, breathing it in, mumbling unimportant, frivolous inanities into an unforgiving Earth. 

And for the first time in a long time, the Earth talks back.


	5. i think it's in swedish or something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julio: 0, Ikea: 1.

"I can do that myself, ye know," Rahne says, possibly for the fifth time in the past ten minutes. She’s sitting in a rocking chair by the window, one hand braced on her enormous, very pregnant belly and the other holding the instructions to unlocking what might as well be the goddamn secrets to the universe. 

The many, many disparate parts of an Ikea crib lay between them like a macabre still-life of furniture gone wrong. 

"C’mon, what kind of ex-boyfriend would I be if I didn’t put together your crib for your magical god wolf baby," Julio says, setting to work on what he’s pretty sure is the base foundation for the crib.

"I can hack the FBI database in under 10 minutes, you know," Julio says helplessly, 10 minutes later, peering down at where the two pieces he’s holding just won’t connect together. 

"I know you can," Rahne says, not entirely unkindly, "but Joseph the carpenter, you are not, Ric, so give it up already, you’re embarrassing yourself."


End file.
